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Chapter 4 - Beyond Blackness
Sarah F. Derbew, Harvard University, Massachusetts
Book:

Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity

Published online:

12 April 2022

Print publication:

12 May 2022, pp 98-128
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Summary

Chapter 4 delves into accounts of meetings between the mighty Aithiopians and their distant neighbors. Herodotus’s iteration of Aithiopia (Hdt. 3.17–26) simultaneously looks back to Homer’s utopian Aithiopia and positions Aithiopia as a historical allegory to critique Athenian imperial aggression. Through the Aithiopian king’s comments to Egyptian spies, Herodotus undermines any fixed, negative assumptions of foreigners that may lurk among his readership. Moreover, Herodotus distinguishes Aithiopians by their height, longevity, and skin color, thereby complicating a facile rendering of black people’s “race.” A reciprocal ethnography of Scythians further exposes the instability of race as two Scythian men, Anacharsis and Scyles, wear Greek clothes and maintain their Scythian identity (Hdt. 4.76–80). Their untimely demise reveals the dangers that Hellenocentric Scythians face once they return to their xenophobic homeland.